ACS NEWS
ACS HONORS HEROES OF CHEMISTRY 2009 Individual, pair, and team HONORED for breakthroughs SUSAN J. AINSWORTH, C&EN DALLAS
FOR IMPROVING health
NOVARTIS INSTITUTES FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH Heroes who invented aliskiren
include (front row, from left) Yamaguchi, Schilling, Maibaum, Mah, (back row, from left) Rigollier, Göschke, Rahuel, Stutz, and Rueeger. Cohen, Herold, and Rasetti are not pictured. WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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DOW CHEMICAL 3M ESPE Filtek From left: Hero Supreme Universal Mickols, who Restorative is the invented improved number one selling reverse osmosis membranes; Betty dental composite in Cadotte, widow of the U.S. To date, her John Cadotte, research has resulted hero who invented highin products that have performance RO contributed $2 bilmembranes; and ACS President lion in sales to the Lane. company. Two Dow Chemical scientists— William E. Mickols and the late John E. Cadotte—were recognized as heroes for developing and improving a process for reverse osmosis (RO) membrane technology that removes salt from seawater, making it suitable for human consumption. In the 1970s, Cadotte developed the chemical technology for making the thin-film composite RO membranes now used by almost all of the world’s current producers of these products. Cadotte, who died in 2005 at age 80, was the founder of FilmTec, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical. Mickols, senior research scientist at FilmTec, later improved on Cadotte’s P ETER CUT TS P HOTO GRAP HY (ALL)
One of the 2009 heroes, and well-being through their Sumita B. Mitra, a corpoexceptional R&D work in rate scientist at 3M ESPE dentistry, water purification, Dental Products Division, and in the treatment of high is responsible for invenblood pressure, 15 industrial tions that “have changed scientists were named as this the field of dentistry” to the year’s Heroes of Chemistry. benefit of patients around They were recognized during the world, Lane said. She a formal dinner at the Amerideveloped Filtek Supreme can Chemical Society’s Universal Restorative, a national meeting in Washcomposite material for denington, D.C., last month. tal and orthodontic applicaThe Heroes of Chemistions. It can be used with try program, which began adhesives, glass-ionomer 3M HERO Mitra developed in 1996, honors chemical systems, and nanotechnoloFiltrek Supreme Universal innovators for developing gy-based materials. Restorative. commercially successful Mitra’s R&D work in products or technologies polymer chemistry, adhethat benefit humankind. sion science, and surface The awards are meant to embody the ACS chemistry paved the way for development vision: Improving people’s lives through of materials that allow dentists to achieve the transforming power of chemistry. reconstruction with the translucency, Each year, an ACS panel selects the Hegloss, and mechanical strength of natural roes of Chemistry from a pool of chemical teeth. She invented “a whole genre of new scientists nominated by their own compamaterials—including ‘white’ fillings—that nies. The Heroes of Chemistry innovations dentists around the world use as adhesives are the “result of the support and vision to glue crowns and veneers to teeth and to of corporate management who invest in repair decayed, cracked, or broken teeth,” science, understand its application, and Lane observed. advocate for it within their organizations,” ACS President Thomas H. Lane said at the awards event. This year’s Heroes of Chemistry “are a visible reminder of the innovation, vitality, and talent that our profession offers to society,” Lane said. “Chemistry continues to be an evolving science that serves as the new foundation for every aspect of our lives. Chemistry is new products, new materials, and a new hope for the future.”
work. He invented high-efficiency FilmTec RO membranes that can treat up to five times more water per hour, with greater energy efficiency and lower cost. This technology helps to provide clean water around the world; these products have saved lives in regional emergencies, such as those resulting from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Sales of these membranes generated $320 million in revenues last year. IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL realm, a team
of scientists from Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research (NIBR) were named as heroes for their discovery of aliskiren, a medication for the treatment of high blood pressure. Unlike other medications for this condition, aliskiren works by interfering with the action of the enzyme renin, which triggers a process that can contribute to high blood pressure. Marketed as Tekturna and Rasilez, the aliskiren medication is the first such drug approved for use in the U.S. and the only direct renin inhibitor available to patients so far. Heroes on the team are Nissim-Claude Cohen, now chair and chief executive officer of Synergix; Richard Göschke, who retired from NIBR; Peter Herold, vice president and head of medicinal chemistry at Medicines Co.; Joseph Rahuel, a bioinformatics expert in biomarker development at NIBR; Vittorio Rasetti, head of operations for global discovery chemistry at NIBR; Walter Schilling, who retired as director for discovery alliances for Roche Pharma Partnering; Stefan Stutz, laboratory head at Novartis Pharma; Yasuchika Yamaguchi, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Nagasaki International University, in Japan; and Robert Mah, Jürgen Maibaum, Pascal Rigollier, and Heinrich Rueeger, who are all senior research investigators at NIBR. Nominations for the 2010 Heroes of Chemistry will be accepted starting in January 2010. Visit www.acs.org/awards for further information. ■
ACS BOARD SHIFTS $1 MILLION FROM LOWER PRIORITY TO HIGHER PRIORITY PROGRAMS THE AMERICAN Chemical Society an-
nounced last week that its board of directors, during their meeting in August
in Washington, D.C., voted to redeploy resources to several higher priority programs. ACS Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer Madeleine Jacobs says that the board decided that $1.04 million of additional funding is needed for a number of society programs to make them more effective. They include education programs to expand services for student members, graduate students, high school chemistry teachers, and two-year colleges; increased support for electronic and Web-based communications; supporting a Science Policy Fellow in the Office of Public Affairs; support for carrying out programs related to the International Year of Chemistry 2011; and expanding electronic dissemination of meeting content. Redeployed funds will come from $1.16 million saved by concluding special funding for the ACS communications strategic plan, terminating the technician education program, and redesigning several programs in the Membership & Scientific Advancement Division and the Office of Public Affairs. To put the redeployment in context, the 2009 ACS approved budget contains more than $19.4 million in direct costs for society programs. The changes approved by the board will be implemented for fiscal 2010. “In the past,” Jacobs says, “the ACS Board has routinely approved new programs and added resources to existing programs. On a few occasions, the board has also eliminated programs. However, this is the first time the board has sought to optimize resource allocation by redeploying funding from lower priority/lower impact programs to higher priority/higher impact programs.” In making its decisions, the ACS Board drew on the work of the Program Review Advisory Group (PRAG), an advisory group to the Society Committee on Budget & Finance. For the past four years, PRAG has been engaged in a process to review ACS programs on the basis of their effectiveness, costs, and alignment with the ACS mission and strategic plan. In 2009, PRAG completed its first four-year cycle of reviewing all society programs. In addition, Jacobs says, since the economic downturn began in 2008, the board has had ongoing discussions about financial sustainability and managing the society’s limited resources to provide optimal value to members, the profession, and the public.—RUDY BAUM WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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